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NetSim Interfacing with Node Red and IBM Watson

Software Recommended: NetSim Standard v12.1/v12.2 (32/64 bit), Visual Studio 2019

Follow the instructions specified in the following link to clone/download the project folder from

GitHub using Visual Studio:

https://tetcos.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/14000099351-how-to-clone-

netsim-file- exchange-project-repositories-from-github-

Other tools such as GitHub Desktop, SVN Client, Sourcetree, Git from the command line, or

any client you like to clone the Git repository.

Note: It is recommended not to download the project as an archive (compressed zip) to avoid

incompatibility while importing workspaces into NetSim.

Secure URL for the GitHub repository:

https://github.com/NetSim-TETCOS/IoT-Interfacing-with-Nodered-and-IBM-Watson_v12.2.git

Objective:

Interfacing NetSim with IBM node red and IBM Watson IoT cloud platform.

About Node-Red and IBM- Watson QuickStart

a. Node-RED is a programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online

services in new and interesting ways. It provides a browser-based editor that makes it

easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette that can be

deployed to its runtime in a single-click.

Node-RED is built on Node.js, taking full advantage of its event-driven, nonblocking

model. This makes it ideal to run at the edge of the network on lowcost hardware such

as the Raspberry Pi as well as in the cloud

b. Quickstart is a way of getting a single device sending data to Watson IoT Platform that

you can visualize in your browser. No sign up is required, you can see how easy it is to

connect your device and, if you want to continue after

Quickstart, you can sign up, add security to your device and you are ready to go.

System and Hardware Requirements

1. NetSim Standard version with Emulator (v12.2)

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2. Node Red Installer - It is a flow editor which provides virtual sensor environment

3. Two Systems

a. System 1: Sensor Server & NetSim Emulation Server Installed

b. System 2: Sensor Client Installed

High Level Connectivity Diagram

• IBM node red 'virtual sensors' are mapped to sensors in NetSim.

• The traffic sent by the IBM node-red virtual sensosr is routed inside NetSim and sent

from the sensors to the sink in NetSim's virtual network.

• From the sink it is sent to IBM Watson IoT platform cloud server.

Step by step implementation.

System 1 Setup: Sensor server and NetSim Emulation Server Installation Node-Red Installation

and its working

• Installation of Node Red on Windows: Follow the steps on how to install Nodered in

windows, at https://nodered.org/docs/getting-started/windows

• Running Node-Red and configuring Sensor server:

• Run Node-red through cmd window

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• Open browser http://127.0.0.1:1880/?#flow/

• Install node-red-contrib-scx-ibmiotapp and node-red-dashboard package

Setting up Sensor - Server

• Design the flow graph as shown

i. Fig:1.1: If you want to have sensor server

ii. Fig:1.2: If you are using Smart meter to get the payload to sensor server

• Configure the device present in the flow graph in Figure 1.1, Figure 1.2, Figure

1.3

Figure 1.1 Flow design for Multiple sensors

Figure 1.2 Multiple Smart Meter connecting one Virtual sensor

Users can also use a smart meter to send the data. Which accepts the following as input and here

is a format to give file as input as shown in Figure 1.3

a. HTTP

b. USB c. FILE

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Figure 1.3

Figure1.4 Sensor Data: Generating 1Packet/second which accepts decimal values

• Since we are now configuring a virtual sensor, the device payload is set by writing a

function in Device Payload in flow chart as Figure 1.5 Sensor Payload

Function:

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var counter1 = context.get('counter1')||0;

counter1 = counter1+1; if(counter1

> 1000) counter1 = 0; context.set('counter1',counter1);

// Create MQTT message in JSON msg = {payload:

JSON.stringify({d:{"Dummy_Data" : counter1}})}; return

msg;

When having multiple sensors in the scenario, users can generate Payload by specifying port

number for each sensors.

Users need to add msg.port=<port number>; in the payload function

Figure 1.5 Sensor Payload

IOT Emulation using virtual Smart-meter using IBM Node-red

Users can also use Node-red Smart-meter to generate payload instead of writing virtual sensor

function.

Node-red requires additional installation of packages related to smart-meter.

Node-RED Node, that reads and parses the data from smartmeter devices. Supports for

example Hager eHz Energy Meter, EMH Energy Meter, EFR SmartGridHub, Siemens 2WR5,

Elster AS1440, Iskraemeco MT174, Itron EM214 Typ 720 etc.

For additional information on how to install smart-meter and use that as payload generator look

into https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-smartmeter.

Sending data from real sensor

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Users can also use real sensor instead of virtual sensors. i.e. users can connect real sensors to

Raspberry Pi and then install Node- red on Raspberry Pi and configure the Node-flow.

While adding function payload users can directly retrieve the real sensor values and send them

to cloud.

Here is an example on how users can connect real sensors to IBM Watson IoT Platform.

https://www.hackster.io/madoyon/connect-sensors-to-ibm-watson-iot-platform-083973

Encryption and Decryption of sensor data

The packet payload can also be encrypted if required. No encryption is applied to the payload by

default. Node-RED nodes uses CryptoJS to encrypt and decrypt messages.

For detail on how to encrypt and decrypt the message users can refer to the examples at

https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-crypto-js

• Connect NetSim Senor node to IBM Watson QuickStart IoT Platform

Figure 1.6

Fig:1.6

• Deploy the Node-Red Flow

• Open the Link icon present in Figure 1.6 to view live sensor data the payload that

you set.

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Installation of NetSim Emulator and setting up emulation server.

• Install NetSim as per NetSim Installation Guide and Start NetSim as administrator

(Make sure that Emulator licenses are available)

• Open IoT network module and Create a simple scenario with one sensor

connecting to cloud as shown in Figure 1.7

• Create Emulation application between Sensor and Cloud (Also users can specify

port if known) as shown in Figure 1.8

i. Source Real IP: 192.168.0.20 (System running Node Red)

ii. Destination Real IP:0.0.0.0 (Mapping traffic to IBM Watson cloud)

Figure 1.7: Network designed in NetSim

• Also place the sensor and the gateway at suitable distances for pathloss to have

an impact on simulation performed.

• Now Run the Simulation for 100s

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Figure 1.8: NetSim Application Panel

System 2 Setup: Sensor Client

a. Install Node-red and perform its running as it was explained above for

Sensor client

b. Design the flow graph as shown in Figure 1.9

c. Configure the device present in the flow graph in Figure 1.10, Figure1.11 and

Figure 1.12

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Figure 1.9

d. Configure NetSim Virtual Senor Node as shown in Fig:1.9

Figure 1.10

e. To access the payload that we generated in Sensor cloud use the Get payload

Function as shown in Figure1.11:

msg.payload=msg.payload.d.dummy_data return

msg;

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Figure1.11

f. Enable Debug window using Debug node to access payload to file as shown in

Figure 1.12. If you need that payload to be written to a file, then while running

Node-red command to the beginning you can start writing it to a file as

node-red >getpayload.txt

Figure 1.12

g. Deploy the Node-Red Flow

h. Make sure that you start receiving the data through the console as shown in

Figure 1.13

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Figure 1.13

Routing Traffic Through NetSim (Emulation)

Once both the systems are setup and the client starts receiving sensor data that was set in the

server, we are ready to perform NetSim Emulation.

Run NetSim Emulation for all the cases mentioned below and create a log of the debug window

when receiving the sensor data.

Example: Impact of variation of channel conditions and sensor count on packet delivery ratio

Note: Since we are performing Emulation the results will vary count of received packets.

Case 1: Sensor count 1

Channel Characteristics Emulation Application 1 Packet received out of 100

No Pathloss 89

Pathloss - 2 70

Pathloss - 3 58

Pathloss - 3.5 28

Case 2: Sensor count 2

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Channel Characteristics

Emulation Application 1 Emulation Application 2

No Pathloss 75 80

Pathloss - 2 73 78

Pathloss - 3 77 63

Pathloss - 3.5 32 27

Case 3: Sensor count 5

Channel App 1

Characteristics

App 2 App 3 App 4 App 5

No Pathloss 63 59 68 44 61

Pathloss - 2 55 50 52 41 51

Pathloss - 3 31 35 28 26 49

Pathloss - 3.5 19 8 12 6 13

Case 4: Sensor count 10

Channel 1 Characteristics

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

No Pathloss 35 32 39 39 46 43 38 34 45 48

Pathloss - 2 30 28 31 34 39 41 33 20 41 18

Pathloss - 3 9 5 10 8 3 5 2 15 11 5

Pathloss - 3.5 5 0 6 2 0 0 0 8 5 0